I am very happy and honored to invite you to our "56th National Congress - TARK 2022", which will be held in Antalya Kaya Palazzo Hotel and Congress Center between 3-6 November 2022.

Last year, TARK 2021 congress theme was determined as "A Breath of Hope" and we started our journey by saying "In order to continue living and breathing, we must first hope. Because every breath is a hope". However, we were expecting to get rid of exhaustion and fatique that pandemic brought, for the news that a medical student committed suicide because he lost hope, the increasing and normalization of violence in health, the loss of our professional dignity and reputation as well as the losses in our personal rights, the failures in keeping the promises made us disappointed and feel insecure, so that we started to question our hope for the future. Our growing hopelessness has led us to spend our Medicine Day in sadness, offended, unhappy and hopeless on this path, which we started with the awareness that medicine is not a destiny but the elbow grease and years of experience.

As we know that there is nothing more destructive than losing hope and the thought that a breath of hope is insufficient, we have determined our congress theme as “Waking up to Hope” this year. In this period, which we understand our values better, we shall say “wake up to our hope in order to achieve our beliefs, dignity, rights and use our imagination for the future, and "wake our patients up to their hope" as we help them regain their health.

We determined to symbolize our theme "Waking up to Hope" with the "Phoenix-Simurgh", which has become a legend with its characteristics throughout the history. As Simurgh is the bird that dominates his will, is not blindly attached, thinks, develops himself, believes in himself that he will succeed, knows that we must act together, and most importantly, trains his ego. The Phoenix bird, which is believed to cure all kinds of diseases or wounds with a touch of its wings, depicts resurrection and rebirth, hope and awakening by rising from the ashes.

This year, on the main axis of our congress, we will discuss current issues in every field that concerns our profession. In our congress, we will enrich our knowledge with many experienced and respected scientists, cultures and intellectuals from Turkey and around the world.

Despite all the difficulties our country is facing, as the Board of Directors of the Turkish Society of Anesthesiology and Reanimation, it is one of our biggest goals to organize TARK 2022 in the best way without compromising the quality of the scientific program and to reach all our members. The congress support which we will provide to our experts and assistants who are working in the field under extremely difficult conditions is a must.

Besides the rich scientific program, we will refresh ourselves and meet to relieve our longings with social programs.

And again, we say, "There are no hopeless situations, there are hopeless people", let Ataturk’s dictum be our road map and let us never lose hope and wake up to our hope every day.

Prof. Dr. Meral Kanbak
President